1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to networked type, amusement devices. More specifically, the invention is directed to improved methods and devices that provide for pari-mutuel wagering.
2. Description of the Related Art
Pari-mutuel wagering is a betting system wherein all the amounts of money wagered by a group of players/system users on each of the possible outcomes of a contest (e.g., which horse from among a field of horses will win a specific horse race) are placed together in a pool; taxes and the “house take” are removed (e.g., 14.25%) so as to yield a payoff amount that is shared among those users who correctly picked the winner of the contest. By the use of a totalisator or tote which keeps track of all the bets, instantaneously computes the sum of the bets made on any one of the possible outcomes in a contest, and display this information, one is able to know when placing one's bet the various odds, depending on which outcome one bets, for winning some multiple of one's original bet—these odds often impact the wager that a user will make and add to the excitement of such games.
Thus, for the example of a horse race, how much one wins relative to one's own winning bet depends on the payoff amount and the sum of the amounts that the other winning users also wagered. From knowing how much has been wagered on each horse in the race and thus the total amount wagered at the time of one placing his or her bet, one can get an idea of how much one might win if the percentages of money being wagered on the different horses stay the same until the start of the race when no further bets are accepted and the winning odds for the various horses are then determined.
Consider a hypothetical race with eight horses/runners, numbered 1-8, and where the amount of money bet in pari-mutuel wagering on each horse to win is as follows at the start of the race; with this information, the calculations for the odds of winning some multiple of one's original bet can be made as shown below:
Runners$ WageredOdds CalculationsOdds1$6,000$88,152/$6,00014.692$14,000$88,152/$14,0006.303$2,400$88,152/$2,40036.734$11,000$88,152/$11,0008.015$2,400$88,152/$2,4004.016$9,400$88,152/$9,4009.387$30,000$88,152/$30,0002.948$8,000$88,152/$8,00011.02Pool:$102,800Payout = Pool − Take = Pool − 0.1425 × Pool = 0.8575 × Pool = $88,152.00
Pari-mutuel betting differs from “fixed-odds” betting in that the final payout is not determined until the pool is closed—in “fixed odds” betting, the odds are often being offered by a bookmaker who is responsible for making the required payouts to the winning users from the monies that the bookmaker presumably collects from those users who placed non-winning bets on the same race with the bookmaker. If these monies are insufficient to make the required wining payouts, the bookmaker is expected to make up the balance of any needed funds from the bookmaker's own surplus funds. Pari-mutuel wagering is frequently state-regulated, and is offered in many places where “fixed odds” betting or gambling is otherwise illegal.
Modern pari-mutuel betting was made possible by the invention of the totalisator or tote. It should be noted that the totalisator was developed out of one's frustration with the prior methods used to conduct racetrack wagering—i.e., on Apr. 26, 1927, Harry Straus was at a racetrack in Maryland where he had a winning $10 bet on a horse that showed 12-1 at the start of the race. The horse won, but the expected payout of $120 didn't happen as the “final odds,” posted after the race, were less than 4-1.
Disappointed with this experience, Straus decided to rectify such situations by inventing a totalisator that would eliminate the time-lag in calculating and presenting the pari-mutuel odds on a horse race, while also issuing betting tickets, and showing a race's payouts. Pimlico Race Course, home of the “Preakness,” the middle jewel of horse racing's “Triple Crown,” installed a partial totalisator in 1930, and Arlington Park installed the United States' first complete totalisator in 1933. This began a long and continuous program of improvement and enhancement in the practice of pari-mutuel wagering.
The pari-mutuel, wagering industry has advanced the practice of wagering to meet the demands of its customers by developing new wagers, cash accepting machines, self-service wagering machines and advanced deposit wagering—first using the telephone and eventually using the internet. The pari-mutuel industry also evolved to address issues with the supply of wagering opportunities by providing interstate simulcast wagering in the late 1970's, and then intrastate simulcast wagering in the early 1980's. Each advancement occurred as a result of customer demand, business needs, restructuring within the industry, changes in the expectations of consumers based on the developments in parallel industries and the entrant of new competitors in the wagering entertainment market.
More recently, consumers' desire for fast paced, graphically-engaging, wagering capabilities, coupled with business issue within the horse racing industry (i.e., the decline of wagering revenues and a desire to find a means to monetize the vast digital assets repository of horse racing images and information from prior races) has driven the industry to introduce new, pari-mutuel wagering, methods and systems that enable one to wager on previously-run racing contests (i.e., order-of-finish contests). A challenging aspect of this introduction was the requirement that these new, pari-mutuel wagering, methods and systems provide unbiased results to all participants while simulating their wagering interactions so as to yield the types of excitement/entertainment levels as experienced during live racing contests.
These challenges were not initially addressed in great detail when wagering on historical racing was first introduced more than fifty years ago in various “play for fun,” charity-based environments. See examples such as “Armchair Racing Inc.” and “A Nite at the Races,” which both attempted to provide a turnkey form of “historical racing,” including instruction on how to arrange the pari-mutuel pricing of such charity-based, wagering pools.
The racing industry's early attempts at “historical racing” quickly led to the incorporation of a totalisator for establishing and handling the necessary pari-mutuel, wagering pools and their subsequent payouts. The industry's versions of such games quickly became known in the industry as “instant wagering” or “historical race wagering.” Many of the methods and apparatus or systems associated with these new or improved forms of pari-mutuel wagering were patent protected, see, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,182,875, 2,179,698, 5,411,258, 5,830,068, 5,846,132, 6,383,074, 6, 358,150, 6,450,887, 6,736,725, 8,814,700, and 8,636,571, or are seeking patent protection, see, e.g., U.S. Patent Publications Nos. (USPPN) 2010/0029372, 2013/0045794, 2014/0066188 and 2014/0066189.
The systems currently associated with “instant wagering” often include the following components that are connected to a totalisator or racetrack tote system via a high speed network: (1) a video server with a database that has video images of gaming contests stored therein, (2) a game server that includes a computer, (3) a number of game or wagering terminals or “instant racing” terminals, each of which is configured to be an effective, simulated, self-service, racetrack terminal and may include the following elements: a money acceptor, a printer, a document reader, a sound card, a credit/debit card reader, and a user interface comprising a touch activated, color display, (4) an administrative terminal that can be programmed to control the actions of the system, and (5) a high-speed gateway to the racetrack tote system.
With such apparatus and systems, it still remained a challenge as to how to create viable pari-mutuel wagering pools from a number of players sitting in front of their individual gaming terminals. One couldn't depend on them all watching the same historical race and methodically placing their wagers—such a method would be too time consuming and the resulting pools would probably not be sufficiently large to attract the players' attention or interest.
The solution to this challenge was to let the users each effectively have their own individual, historical races to contemplate and upon which to eventually place a wager without having them tied into the actions of other users who also had to be allowed the time to place their wagers before a race could start. Thus, players using their terminals and wagering on their own game effectively compete against each other for “progressive” pools which are formed for each of the types of bets that can be made by any and all of the players who are playing at essentially the same time. A player who “hits” or wins his wager receives the “progressive” pool's payout.
Each of these “progressive” pools are formed by accumulating the currency from the wagers of the prior players (i.e., prior in the sense that another player may have hit a “Bet” button only a few seconds before one places his/her own “Bet”) who did not select the right horse/s necessary to win their wagers. To arrive at the exact funding going into these “progressive” pools, one must still make the standard deductions for taxes and “take out,” plus deduct the monies necessary to fund a “seed” pool or “pool fund”. This “seed” pool is used to fund to some stated, minimum level each of the “progressive” pools after a player “wins”—otherwise, such a “progressive” pool would be empty except for the next player's wager in those situations when the immediately prior player was a winner.
Using the example of a trifecta (i.e., player places a wager on the horses that will finish first, second and third in exact order) game, when a system user or player commits to a wager, the game server selects at random a combination of three contestants/horses as the first three finishers—a race with those first three finishers is selected from the database of prior races. After the user enters his or her selections and places the wager, the race results are shown, including the identity of the race, and a video recording of the race or its finish.
In “instant racing,” the determination as to whether a player has actually won his or her wager is augmented by the inclusion of the results of a random number generator (see: Association of Racing Commissioners International, Inc.'s (ARCI)—004-155: Proprietary Wagers, Sections: A(1), A(3) and A(4)). The benefit of using the random number generator is that it ensures fairness and it gives a distribution of outcomes around the average outcomes over time that have both positive and negative variability which helps to provide the excitement levels that the typical pari-mutuel wager is seeking.
Despite these recent developments in “instant racing,” there still exists the opportunity to further improve this form of pari-mutuel wagering so that its participants are provided with the reported greater excitement and entertainment levels that are experienced during live racing contests.